Bainbridge: How ice cream found sweet success in Greenville

When V.O. Garrison moved his ice cream factory from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to Greenville in 1918, he began what became one of the city’s most successful businesses.

His timing was impeccable: the 100,000 soldiers who eventually trained at Greenville’s Camp Sevier wanted ice cream, and Garrison could produce it in quantity. He became the camp's major supplier.

While ice cream had been a favorite delicacy since at least the 18th century (George Washington was said to have spent $200 making it in the 1790s), wholesale manufacturing in the early 20th century used newly invented mechanical refrigeration processes and sterilization methods to make it a commercial success.

Borden once served the Southeast its beloved ice cream from a large plant in Greenville.(Photo: Submitted photo)

Garrison brought the processes and the machinery with him from Kentucky. He built a factory on the west side of South Main Street, and he hired L.C. Girardeau to manage it. Garrison’s Ice Cream was located at right angles to and within feet of the old Coach Factory building, just past modern-day Gunter Theatre at the Peace Center.

By early 1918, the plant was manufacturing at least seven different ice cream flavors, including tango and Florida citrus. But the building had problems. The lot was narrow, and the factory could not be expanded. Furthermore, delivery service (to homemakers and drugstores as well as Camp Sevier) was essential, and, without access to a loading dock, almost impossible.

After the war, ice cream consumption slowed slightly, but the Garrison Co. had little to worry about. The sweet creamy stuff was being advertised as a health food, with the food value of one quart of ice cream equaling that of 18 eggs.

Home economists (as well as dairies) promoted the “milk message”: Children should drink a quart a day. Ice cream was an ideal between-meal snack. In addition, with Prohibition the law of the land, ice cream sodas became the preferred drink for many.

In 1922, Garrison’s Ice Cream Co. was re-chartered as the Greenville Ice Cream Co.. The incorporators included Garrison, Girardeau, and C.M. McGee, cashier of the Norwood National Bank and an investor in many Greenville companies, who may have provided additional funding.

Children were encouraged to eat ice cream, for the milk, of course.(Photo: Submtted photo)

At any rate, in 1923 the company purchased a lot on West Washington Street and an adjacent one on Jones (now Nassau) Street, almost doubling its available square footage. The Jones Street lot at the rear of the property provided easy access for deliveries, pickups, and loading.

The company built a well-insulated, solid brick, two-story main section with a narrow single-story south wing for offices and freezing rooms.

In 1924, when the plant moved into its new quarters, Washington Street was slowly changing from upscale residential (at the turn of the century the most elegant and fashionable in Greenville) to a less elite neighborhood. Large single-family homes were being converted into boardinghouses, and new apartments were built, including one on the same block with the ice cream plant.

The company, which advertised frequently in the pages of The Greenville News, marked its move with an advertisement for orange ice, “the most delicious, smoothest refreshment you ever tasted. Available at every good ice cream man in town . . . and at our NEW PLANT now at West Washington Street.”

Ice cream ad(Photo: Submitted photo)

Just a year later, Garrison sold the business and moved on to Hendersonville, NC, leaving Girardeau in charge. In the following decade, the Greenville Ice Cream Co. created and advertised a wide range of flavors. They included fig-walnut, mellow mood (coconut custard), Nesselrode pudding, caramel pecan, and that wonderful “health food,” rubyette, (a brick of fruitcake mixed with vanilla ice cream and pistachio sherbet) for Christmas.

By the early 1930s, the company began advertising under the brand name “Hostess Ice Cream,” sold at pharmacies, soda shops, ice cream bars, and, in the 1940s, at grocery stores, but the plant remained unchanged. Later its advertising dollars sponsored a popular daily music program on WFBC radio.

While the building remained unchanged, the neighborhood around it became more commercial. In 1947, a real estate firm advertised two lots immediately adjacent to the factory for sale, noting that “West Washington Street is rapidly developing into a business section.”

Greenville Ice Cream Co. was facing increasing competition from national producers Foremost and Pet Dairies and from Biltmore Dairy in nearby Asheville. And L.C. Girardeau, who had been with the company since 1918, was 65.

In June 1947 the Southeast Division of Borden Co,, an old (founded 1857) and huge (soon to be the largest dairy producer in the nation) corporation purchased the Greenville Ice Cream Co. for about $29,000.

The Hostess brand was soon replaced by Lady Borden ice cream, and machinery was upgraded, but little else changed for its 45 workers (both black and white). In September 1952, however, a destructive fire did $70,000 worth of damage to the plant, gutting much of the second floor and the rear of the plant, but not endangering the concrete floor or walls.

The company made repairs, but it needed to expand. In 1961 Bordon’s built a new one-story brick, steel and concrete addition that cost $400,000 (with equipment). The plant consisted of a second floor “Mix Room,” where locally purchased milk and cream were mixed in giant blenders with sugar and stabilizers before being pumped into vats on the first floor, where nuts and flavoring were added. Then the creamy substance was cooled to almost 20 degrees below zero. Workers in parkas, gloves, and heavy boots plodded along the ice-covered concrete floor.

The expansion allowed the company to produce 3,000,000 gallons of ice cream annually.

The following April the company invited the local community, including the black youngsters who attended Oscar Street School behind the plant, to celebrate the completion of its addition. The celebration included a visit from Borden’s “official cow,” Elsie, and her twin calves, Lobelia and Lothario, who were housed in a “boudoir-like” trailer, decorated with old-fashioned farm tools. Between 7,000 and 8,000 people, more than half of them children, toured the plant, many twice, ate free ice cream, and mooed at Elsie and her twins.

A final major expansion in 1967 made the West Washington Street plant one of the largest ice cream manufacturers in the Southeast. The company purchased three adjacent lots, including the corner of West Washington and Nassau streets, and built a one-story cold storage addition (so cold that a new hire quit after his second day of employment, saying he didn’t want to take a job away from an Eskimo), where 140,000 gallons of ice cream could be stored.

At that point, Borden’s was the nation’s largest dairy operation, and the Greenville facility was serving both Carolinas, Alabama and Georgia. The corporation had become a huge food conglomerate, acquiring Wise snacks, Wylers Lemonade, two pasta makers, and Bama jellies.

But in the 1980s, through corporate mismanagement and overextension, it faltered. In 1989 it closed a number of Southeastern plants, and the Greenville facility was doomed. It closed two years later.

Today the Southernside building, which overlooks soon-to-be built Unity Park and many half-vacant streets, has been sold to future developers who understand its history and importance in Greenville’s future landscape.